Scenes from the Class Struggle in Chicago 1956

Can not wait for our friend Margo Jefferson's memoir on color, class, being brought up right, and the swarming eyes of judgment always hovering as one makes one's way in life, every mistake magnified because to be a Negro in the fifties in beyond was not to be simply an individual but a representative--a proxy for the whole race.

In Negroland, nothing highlighted our privilege more than the threat
to it. Inside the race we were the self-designated aristocrats,
educated, affluent, accomplished; to Caucasians we were oddities,
underdogs, and interlopers. White people who, like us, had manners,
money, and education… But, wait…“like us” is presumptuous for the 1950s.
Liberal whites who saw that we too had manners, money, and education
lamented our caste disadvantage. Other whites preferred not to see us in
the private schools and public spaces of their choice. They had ready a
bevy of slights: from skeptics, the surprised glance and spare
greeting; from waverers, the pleasantry, eyes averted; from disdainers,
the direct cut. Caucasians with materially less than we had license from
Caucasians with more than they to subvert or attack our privilege.

Caucasian privilege lounged and sauntered, draped itself casually
about, turned vigilant and commanding, then cunning and devious. We
marveled at its tonal range, its variety, its largesse in letting its
most humble share the pleasures of caste with its mighty. We knew what
was expected of us. Negro privilege had to be circumspect: impeccable
but not arrogant; confident yet obliging; dignified, not intrusive.

Taken from Margo's "Scenes from a Life in Negroland," published this week at Guernica, and somewhat of a misleading sample because in toto it's much more of an evocative mosaic, composed of vignettes and parental portraiture (the mother's comments are always tart, resigned, and pretense-piercing); each paragraph falls beautifully into the tile pattern, repiecing the past, much like Evan S. Connell's Mr. and Mrs. Bridge novels. So please read the whole thing.